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Summer weather

Dangerous heat hangs on

Request to buy this photoCHARLES KRUPA | ASSOCIATED PRESSHouse painter Jesus Rubela wipes the sweat from his face while working on a home in the South Boston neighborhood. Relief should arrive in Massachusetts on Saturday, but also might bring strong storms.

Request to buy this photoJULIO CORTEZ | ASSOCIATED PRESSMiguel Torres, 77, rides in his electric wheelchair near a fountain at Pier A Park in Hoboken, N.J., to escape his sweltering apartment. Heat indexes in the Northeast eclipsed 100 yesterday.

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NEW YORK — From South Dakota to Massachusetts, temperatures surged to potentially dangerous
levels yesterday as the largest heat wave of the summer stretched out and stagnated, and relief in
many parts of the country is days away.

Most states had at least one region where the temperature hit 90 degrees, according to the
National Weather Service, although the worst heat was in the Midwest to Northeast. Humid air made
it feel worse; heat indexes in some places topped 100.

In New York, where it was 96 degrees, sidewalk food vendor Ahmad Qayumi said that by 11 a.m.,
the cramped space in his steel-walled cart got so hot, he had to turn off his grill and coffee
machine.

“It was just too hot. I couldn’t breathe,” he said, turning away a customer who asked for a
hamburger. “Just cold drinks,” he said.

Amid the heat, officials in Washington’s Maryland suburbs averted a cutoff of water service to
hundreds of thousands of people after a massive water main failed. However, mandatory restrictions
on water use remained in effect: People in Prince George’s County were asked not to run their
faucets, water their lawns or flush toilets to keep the water system from emptying during emergency
repairs.

Firefighters in southern California faced brutally hot — but dangerously dry — conditions as
they battled a wildfire outside Palm Springs. Temperatures were predicted as high as 105 and
humidity as low as 1 percent, said Tina Rose, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry
and Fire Protection. The fire has consumed seven homes.

It was hot enough to buckle highway pavement in several states. Firefighters in Indianapolis
evacuated 300 people from a senior living community after a power outage knocked out the air
conditioning. Illinois opened cooling centers. The Environmental Protection Agency said the heat
was contributing to air pollution in New England.

At the World Trade Center reconstruction site in New York, workers building a rail hub dripped
under their hard hats, thick gloves and heavy-duty boots. Some wore towels around their necks to
wipe away the sweat.

“We’re drinking a lot of water, down under by the tracks, in and out of the sun all day — very
hot,” said carpenter Elizabeth Fontanez of the Bronx, who labored with 20 pounds of tools and
safety equipment strapped to her waist. Since the heat wave began, she said, she has been changing
shirts several times during her shifts.

Officials blamed hot weather for at least one death. A 78-year-old Alzheimer’s patient died of
heat exhaustion after wandering from his northern Kentucky home on Tuesday in temperatures that
rose to 93 degrees.

Limited relief, in the form of a cold front, was expected to drop south from Canada today before
sweeping through the Midwest and into the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast by Saturday. That will bring
lower temperatures, but also possibly severe thunderstorms, said weather-service spokesman
Christopher Vaccaro.

New Mexico and parts of Texas turned out to be rare outposts of cool air yesterday — but not
without trouble of their own: Heavy rains prompted flood watches and warnings in some areas. More
than5 inches of rain fell in 24 hours in Plainview, Texas, north of Lubbock, according to the
weather service.